


More than kisses, letters mingle souls

by middlemarch



Category: GLOW (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Family, Letters, Romance, another way Season 4 might have begun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 15:26:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28797582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: Ruth hadn't had any epiphanies over the holiday but maybe that was for the best. That's what she told herself anyway.
Relationships: Justine Biagi & Sam Sylvia, Sam Sylvia/Ruth Wilder
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	More than kisses, letters mingle souls

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from John Donne.

Ruth didn’t get much mail. Bills, of course, and a few catalogs, whatever passed for the Pennysaver that made her hands smudged and inky in the few seconds it took to throw it in the garbage. Around her birthday, she got a few pastel cards with a five dollar bill tucked in from her grandmother and her great-aunts Mildred and Norma-Lee; it usually paid for a decent meal at Super Jade Dragon, with extra egg-rolls. 

She didn’t get oversized, overstuffed manila envelopes with a squadron of stamps in the top right corner, her name written in block letters in black Sharpie. She actually shook the package before she tried to open it, aware that she could tell absolutely nothing from the sound and that if it was a bomb, she wasn’t doing herself any favors. Sheila wasn’t home yet. She’d had an audition which Ruth had worked pretty hard not to be envious of (and failed) and then had some errands to run. Ruth was planning to bone up on the lines for the audition she hadn’t yet gotten and then brew a pot of tea and re-read _The Mysterious Affair at Styles_ and not think about Vegas. Sam. Christ, Sam. Debbie. Eden. Serpents and apples and being cast out and laughed at and what it would take to wield a huge flaming sword. She would drink her tea and pretend it was a tisane and that she’d ever had a chance of figuring out who the killer was.

And then she got the big, fat envelope and it might as well have been a bomb.

There were about thirty type-written pages inside, some clearly having been wadded up and then smoothed out, the wrinkles and folds still apparent. Many pages had bold strike-throughs, comments scribbled in the margins while others broke off, leaving the rest blank as the desert at dawn. Some were stapled together, a few had a paperclip securing them and on top of them all was a page torn from a spiral notebook, the ripped edge a scalloped fringe.

> “Dear Ruth,
> 
> So, this is weird, me writing you but I guess it’s not any weirder than everything else. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I guess some shit went down after the audition (sorry about that), with you and Sam, and well, this isn’t the first time I’ve asked you to be nice to him. To be his friend, because he still needs one but I really think what he needs is you and he’ll never admit it to me. Or to anyone else, but if you look at what I sent, I think you can see he knows it. I don’t know how you left it, but if after you read this stuff, you’d be willing to talk, he’s at George’s every morning at 9. It’s that diner on Lakewood. I think he can manage not to be a total asshole for at least as long as it takes to drink one cup of coffee. 
> 
> -Justine”

Ruth didn’t pause to re-read Justine’s letter, just dove into the pages that Sam had written. A Western with a New England schoolmarm trapped in a one-room schoolhouse during a blizzard, forced to accept help from a Comanche. He’d actually named that lead Ruth Anderson. The opening scene of something more in his wheelhouse, horror-schlock he was making a point with, but the protagonist was a scrappy brunette who kept referencing Chekov, wearing a cursed necklace that burned her neck. Hard sci-fi, filled with robots and computers, one astronaut left on the ship, a woman who wore a grey tank top and answered to Rue; that one required access to the observatory and he’d castigated himself in the margins for the cost. Another scene that didn’t fit any genre, he’d set in a desert, maybe outside Vegas, the story of a lost woman who turned out to be a shaman or a liar, abandoning it after introducing the male lead, an old man called Pascal who was going blind. An homage to film noir, about a detective and a mark, but the name painted on the frosted glass door panel was R.W. Silvia. Sam couldn’t decide it he’d shoot that one in black and white and whether the mark would refer to R.W. as “kiddo” or “lady.” 

Page after page, line after line, she saw herself—a muse and a thorn in his fucking side (that was in the margins, thorn underscored as if he was the one who needed the reminder), appreciated, missed. Wanted. Loved. And yet, he’d thrown the scenes out, abandoned them and she couldn’t know if it was because he couldn’t see a way to write to the end or if he didn’t think it was worth it. If it hurt too much or not enough. At least, she couldn’t know why unless she asked.

* * *

“Here’s your coffee,” Ruth said, setting the white mug down in front of Sam as if he were any other customer she’d waited on. She put her own mug down at the place across from him, glad he had a regular spot in a booth towards the back, which afforded them some measure of privacy in the diner. The morning rush was over and few people lingered; she would have less likely to be overheard in a crowd. It had been a miracle Sam hadn’t noticed her at the counter, sweet-talking the woman there into giving her Sam’s order. The other woman slung a dishtowel over her shoulder and warned her _He’s got a mouth on him_ and Ruth had only nodded and shrugged. She knew more about that mouth than the waitress could ever imagine—how soft it could be, how gentle and wicked. She’d taken the coffee cups in her hands and walked what felt like a thousand miles to find out what he’d say.

“Shit,” he muttered. He looked tired but he hadn’t been able to hide the light in his eyes when he’d looked up to see it was her and not the regular waitress. Ruth sat down and took a sip of the coffee.

“You know I don’t like coffee, but this isn’t that bad,” she said. 

“Good fucking morning to you, Ruth,” Sam said. “What’re you doing here?”

“The one in the desert would be the cheapest to shoot and it’s the least derivative. I liked the sci-fi one, but I can’t imagine how you’d cope if anyone said Sam Sylvia was following in Ridley Scott’s footsteps and on paper, it wouldn’t be a reach,” Ruth said. She’d planned out a half a dozen responses, rehearsing them in front of the bathroom mirror; she’d hoped he’d set her up for these lines since they felt the strongest. She’d been able to look him in the eye the whole time.

“Justine,” Sam said, in a tone that was as close as he came to a sigh. 

“Are you sorry?” Ruth asked. It took everything she had not to clasp her hands together as if she were praying.

“That you’re here? No,” he replied. “That you read the worthless shit I threw out? Yeah. That my daughter is a fucking busybody who goes through my fucking trash? No question.”

“I didn’t think it was shit,” she said. “What you wrote. What you meant.”

“Is this pity, Ruth? Because I don’t think I can deal with that. Not stone-cold sober in a diner,” he said. “Not from you.”

“It isn’t like you to be so self-indulgent,” she snapped. “You think I like this?”

“Jesus fucking Christ. If she’d just let me cast you, I would not have to be living through this goddamn reality,” Sam said, almost as if he were talking only to himself. That meant everything he said was the truth or as close to it as he was willing to get.

“Maybe this is her way of making amends,” Ruth said. She’d brought him a cup of mediocre diner coffee—what was one more olive branch? “And the desert one has something, something that’s classic Sam Sylvia but entirely new. It felt gory without there being any blood. Though, it would be easier to get Justine’s studio to fund the Western, I think.”

“You’re enjoying this,” Sam said.

“Wasn’t I supposed to see myself in those scripts? Weren’t you trying to say something to me?” Ruth asked, letting the questions pin him. He had the tall faux-leather back of the booth to support him. She was leaning forward, surrounded only by the air, the morning light in uneasy eddies.

“I didn’t think you’d be listening,” he admitted. “I didn’t think you’d want to hear anything else from me. I shouldn’t have left. I shouldn’t have written you love letters I threw out, but they weren’t good enough to send.”

She was supposed to be bitter but she couldn’t bring herself to be. She pushed the coffee cup away and smiled at him, watching him see the look in her eyes. His face was unfamiliar with hope and she could see the work it took in his cheeks, the line of his jaw, the curve of his lower lip.

“They were good enough. For a first draft,” she said. He put his hand over hers, turned it so their palms were touching. He had good hands, good at handling things that needed care. “I don’t want you to leave again without telling me you’re coming back.”

“You think I’d leave you?” he asked. She knew he was making a promise.

“You like a grand gesture, I get it. So do I. I just want you there after,” she said. He nodded and held her hand a little more tightly. She remembered what it felt like when he’d relaxed into that first kiss at the bar, when he’d stopped asking himself if she really wanted it and started showing her what he could do, what he recognized in her and loved.

“Hey, Cynthia,” he called to the waitress at the counter who barely glanced at him. “A slice of the chocolate cream pie over here. Two forks.”

“That’s not too sweet for you?” she asked. Debbie wouldn’t have asked and neither would Sheila. Maybe they were made of sterner stuff but it was taking all she had to just ask the question and wait for the answer.

“No. It’s not too fucking sweet for me, Ruth,” he said. “You going to share?”

“A little. I’m pretty hungry, I didn’t have any breakfast,” she said. 

“They say it’s the most important meal of the day,” Sam said, like he was scolding her and not telling her again and again that he loved her. “Once you finish, we can get out of here.”

“And go where?” she said. Cynthia was taking her time and was more than earning an enormous tip on two coffees and the piece of pie by not interrupting what was looking to be one of future Ruth’s favorite memories.

“Home,” Sam said. “Unless you don’t—”

“Oh, I do,” Ruth said. She ended up leaving the last bite for Sam, knowing how much better it would taste on his lips and how he’d grin at her when she said so.


End file.
